"Who
may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His
holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart. " Psalm
24:3

The prayers that Jesus and Paul
prayed were a combination of spontaneous petitions and traditional prayers
that were prayed at certain times of day. One of them that is still prayed
today is called the "Amidah" or "Eighteen Benedictions."1
It is quite lengthy, and consists of prayers for all the various concerns
of the Jewish people. For thousands years since Jesus lived, these petitions
have stayed nearly the same.

In contemporary Protestant culture,
we tend to disdain rote prayer, preferring the intimacy of spontaneous
prayer and feeling that a repeated prayer is empty and hollow. We wonder
how a person could avoid just "going through the motions." The answer is a concept that the
rabbis developed known as "Kavanah." The word means "direction,"
"intention," or "devotion," and the idea behind praying with kavanah is that
you set the direction of your thinking toward God, and toward praying
the memorized prayer "with all your heart."

A person who has kavanah focuses his entire being on
prayer, and is undistracted by the chaos around him. He may have said
the same prayer a thousand times, but his mind is sunk so deeply into
the words that he is experiencing new insights and feelings from them
today that he has never experienced before.

In synagogues, above the ark that
holds the Torah scrolls, there is often a plaque that says, "Know
before whom you stand." That is just what it means to have kavanah in prayer - to have a sense of standing in the presence of God, to know
that you are addressing the sovereign Lord of the universe.

When I used to pray after crawling in bed, I would often fall asleep before
finishing my prayer. After thinking about the lack of reverence this has
for God, I now make myself kneel or stay awake in some way, or pray at
a time of day when I'm more awake. He deserves our best, not our least
efforts in prayer.

Kavanah can go beyond prayer as well
- our lives should also show it too. We should live each hour and day
with devotion and intention, being aware of God's presence all around
us. When we do this, our lives will truly be the reflection of Christ,
whose every desire was to please and honor God in every way.